Explore South central Laos
From Savannakhet, Route 9 heads east through a series of drab and dusty towns, passing Muang Phin and then Xepon, where it begins its climb up into the Annamite Mountains. The road ends its Lao journey at the Lao Bao pass, before crossing into Vietnam and continuing down to Dong Ha, where it joins Highway 1. The French completed the road in 1930, as part of an Indochinese road network intended to link Mekong towns with the Vietnamese coast, bringing in Vietnamese migrants and trucking out Lao produce. Today, the Thais, too, have an interest in Route 9 as a trade corridor, linking their relatively poor northeastern provinces with the port of Da Nang in Vietnam.
While most travellers barrel through here on direct buses to and from Vietnam, the frontier is not without sites of interest. As you approach Muang Phin, Route 9 begins to cross the north–south arteries of the Ho Chi Minh Trail, a network of dirt paths and roads that spread throughout southeastern Laos, running from the Mu Gia Pass in Bolikhamxai province south through Attapeu and into Cambodia. While much of the debris from the war lies off the beaten track, some of these war relics are easily accessible. Another place worth stopping in to explore the surrounding area is the recently rebuilt market town of Xepon which, along with neighbouring towns, is populated predominantly by Phu Tai people, a lowland Lao group.
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Xepon
Xepon
A picturesque village in the foothills of the Annamite Mountains, 40km from the Vietnamese border, XEPON is a pleasant rural stopover for those in transit on the route to Vietnam or Savannakhet. The original town of Xepon was destroyed during the war – along with every house of the district’s two hundred villages – and was later rebuilt here 6km west of its original location, on the opposite bank of the Xe Banghiang River. The old city (written as “Tchepone” on some old maps) had been captured by communist forces in 1960 and became an important outpost on the Ho Chi Minh Trail. As such, it was the target of a joint South Vietnamese and American invasion in 1971, aimed at disrupting the flow of troops and supplies headed for communist forces in South Vietnam.
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The Ho Chi Minh Trail at Ban Dong
The Ho Chi Minh Trail at Ban Dong
As you head east out of Xepon, the highway gradually climbs through the foothills of the Annamite chain, passing bomb craters – often obscured by brush – and unexploded ordnance, dragged to the roadside by villagers clearing their land. Women squat by the road with their intricately woven baskets, selling bamboo shoots – a local speciality. The area’s abundant bamboo crop is in fact partially a by-product of the spraying of defoliants by American forces who hoped to expose the arteries of the Ho Chi Minh Trail: hardy bamboo is quick to take root in areas of deforestation.
Rows of drink shops, competing to quench the thirst of Vietnamese truckers, signal your arrival in BAN DONG, a popular stop on any tour of the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Villagers are slowly growing accustomed to tourists poking around for a glimpse of the Republic of Vietnam’s American-made tanks left over from one of America’s most ignominious defeats during the war, at the battle known as Lam Son 719.
The tank that’s easiest to find lies five minutes’ walk off the road that cuts south out of town towards Taoy, which was once a crucial artery of the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Shaded by a grove of jackfruit trees, it rests atop a small hill east of the road, and has been partially dismantled for its valuable steel. Ban Dong was cleared of unexploded war debris in 1998, but it’s still a good idea to ask a villager to show you the way, as you should always take extra care when leaving a well-worn path, and vegetation in the rainy season can obscure the tank’s location. If you’re travelling by public transport, the best time to visit Ban Dong is in the morning, as there are no late-afternoon buses plying this stretch of highway. Guesthouses in Xepon may be able to help you organize a round-trip.
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Vietnamese influence
Vietnamese influence
Ties between Muang Phin and Vietnam go back a long way. During much of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the area’s Phu Tai inhabitants paid tribute to the court in Hué. In the middle of the nineteenth century, the Vietnamese rulers, having just wrapped up a war with Siam, were content to exact a light tribute of wax and elephant tusks from the Phu Tai, preferring to leave the Tai minority’s territory as a loose buffer zone between regional powers. By this point, Vietnamese merchants, following the traditional trading route across the Lao Bao pass, were already arriving in Muang Phin with cooking pans, iron, salt and fish sauce, and returning east with cows and water buffaloes in tow. A story told by an early French visitor to the town attests to the business acumen of one of these merchants. Upon arriving in town, the merchant found prices too high, but was reluctant to return home without making a good profit. With a quick conversion to Buddhism the merchant’s problem was solved: he shaved his head and shacked up in the local temple where he could defray his expenses until prices dropped, at which point the merchant donned a wig, bought up a few buffalo and hightailed it back to Hué.
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Operation Lam Son 719
Operation Lam Son 719
On the outskirts of the village of Ban Dong on Route 9 sit two rusting American tanks, all that remains of a massive invasion and series of battles that have become a mere footnote in the history of the decade-long American military debacle in Indochina. In 1971 President Nixon, anticipating a massive campaign by North Vietnamese troops against South Vietnam the following year (which happened to be an election year in the US), ordered an attack on the Ho Chi Minh Trail to cut off supplies to communist forces. Although a congressional amendment had been passed the previous year prohibiting US ground troops from crossing the border from Vietnam into Laos and Cambodia, the US command saw it as an opportunity to test the strengths of Vietnamization, the policy of turning the ground war over to the South Vietnamese. For the operation, code-named Lam Son 719, it was decided that ARVN (Army of the Republic of Vietnam) troops were to invade Laos and block the trail with the backing of US air support. The objective was Xepon, a town straddled by the Trail, which was some 30–40km wide at this point. Nixon’s national security adviser, Henry Kissinger, was later to lament that “the operation, conceived in doubt and assailed by scepticism, proceeded in confusion”. In early February 1971, ARVN troops and tanks pushed across the border at Lao Bao and followed Route 9 into Laos. Like a caterpillar trying to ford a column of red ants, the South Vietnamese troops were soon engulfed by North Vietnamese (NVA) regulars, who were superior in number. Ordered by President Thieu of South Vietnam to halt if there were more than 3000 casualties, ARVN officers stopped halfway to Xepon and engaged the NVA in a series of battles that lasted over a month. US air support proved ineffectual, and by mid-March scenes of frightened ARVN troops drastically retreating were being broadcast around the world. In an official Lao account of the battle, a list of “units of Saigon puppet troops wiped out on Highway 9” included four regiments of armoured cavalry destroyed between the Vietnam border and Ban Dong.
